A favourable specimen of the _Epigrams_ is the following from the first book:--
"HOW DIFFICULT A THING IT IS TO TREAD IN THE PATHES OF VERTUE.
"The way to vertue's hard, uneasie, bends Aloft, being full of steep and rugged alleys; For never one to a higher place ascends, That always keeps the plaine, and pleasant valleyes: And reason in each human breast ordaines That precious things be purchased with paines."
"As the glow-worme shines brightest in the darke And frankincense smells sweetest in the fire; So crosse adventures make us best remarke A sincere friend from a dissembled lyer; For some, being friends to our prosperity, And not to us, when it failes, they decay."
The fault of obscurity, of which the poet Browning has been accused, could not be laid to the charge of Sir Thomas Urquhart. Nor can it be said of him that he neglects truths that are obvious, and occupies himself in discovering and bringing forward those that are recondite. The sentiments to which he gives utterance seem those which spontaneously occur to the average mind; on reading the subject of the poem, as given in the title, and then the poem itself, we think
and we come away without any feverish mental agitation or accelerated movement of pulse.[156]
The sentiments which, from his own account, had, on more occasions than one, filled his mind, are expressed in the piece entitled "THE GENEROUS SPEECH OF A NOBLE CAVALLIER AFTER HE HAD DISARMED HIS ADVERSARY AT THE SINGLE COMBAT." They are as follows:--
"Though with my raper, for the guerdon Your fault deserveth, I may pierce ye, Your penitence in craving pardon, Transpassions my revenge in mercy; And wills me both to end this present strife, And give you leave in peace t' enjoy your life."
Another Epigram, which one critic regards as Urquhart's _chef d'œuvre_ in this kind of composition, is the following:--
"Take _man_ from _woman_, all that she can show Of her own proper, is nought else but _wo_."[157]
In a letter of commendation prefixed to his next work, _The Trissotetras_, Sir Thomas Urquhart says of himself: "This Mathematicall tractate doth no lesse bespeak him a good Poet and Orator, then [than] by his elaboured poems he hath showne himselfe already a good Philosopher and Mathematician." This self-criticism is all that could be desired. A work on mathematics that proves an author's possession of poetical and rhetorical gifts, and a volume of poetry which leads one to think that the singer is an accomplished mathematician, are gifts with which the world is but seldom favoured, and as it is likely that their merits will not instantly be observed, the zeal of the author in calling our attention to them is by no means unnecessary. But when he goes on to say, still speaking of himself in the third person, "The Muses never yet inspired sublimer conceptions in a more refined stile then [than] is to be found in the accurate strain of his most ingenious Epigrams," we feel that he is less felicitous. His first shot has hit the blank, but the second is wide of the target altogether.